Bittersweet Goodbyes

Sorry for the overdue entry! It’s been a pretty busy last couple of weeks trying to figure out what our next steps were! I am writing from our rooftop balcony on the island of Shela in Lamu. It doesn’t get any better than writing while looking at white sand beaches and beautiful blue water. Lamu will be a blog entry in and of itself so I’ll save the details until later.

Last I wrote, we had just come back from our second safari in Nakuru. We knew that our time was coming to an end, and when you don’t want things to end, they go by even quicker. During our last couple of weeks, we had an outreach which was as usual, quite eye-opening. We had split into pairs and Nikita and I went to do a home visit. When we arrived, we met a young woman, about 20 years old who had epilepsy. When she was 10 years old, she had a seizure which caused her to fall into a fire. Because of that, her legs were completely impaired (causing her to walk on the lateral side of her feet). She also had cognitive impairments and was not able to do much because of her condition. As we were assessing her, we noticed a little girl, about 3 years old. We thought this was her little sister, but the head of the village told us that a few years ago, she was raped in her sleep and as a result had a child. We asked him who he thought did this to her and he said it could be any of the men in the village because they know she has a disability and would not be able to fight back. Unbelievable and so sad. After this, we went to another house to visit a lady who had a severe disability because of polio. She sat so cross-legged that Nikita and I thought she was an amputee. This lady must have been about 45 years old, and in the room was her husband who looked to be close to 80. He sat in the room the entire time but did not say a word and ate his ugali and fish while we carried out the assessment. At one point he fell asleep while he was eating, and Nik and I couldn’t help but giggle. This lady was so positive and great, but due to her severe arm and leg contractures, is unable to move around and earn a living. She has four children, two of them who are still quite young. She asked us if we could purchase a wheelchair for her so that she would be able to get around easier. We told her that we would do our best, and once again, you can see where your donations have come!

Our last weekend was great and relaxing. We told Perez that we would cook the two meals on the weekend so she could taste “Canadian” food. We made spaghetti and homemade sauce one day, and spicy thai vegetable curry the next day. We really loaded up on the hot sauce, but no one seemed to mind and enjoyed their food thoroughly. Our weekend was lovely and all of us were enjoying it until Christine burst into our room at 11pm Sunday night and told us that Erica had to go to the hospital. Erica hadn’t been feeling well for the last few days, and we thought she had malaria but that the medications she received from the doctor were controlling it. However, on Sunday night, her fever shot up and she couldn’t keep anything down. They rushed her to the hospital at night and the result was that she had some sort of infection and had to go to the Aga Khan Hospital which was 4 hours away in Kisumu! We weren’t prepared to say bye to Christine & Erica because our plan was for us to go to Lamu with them. The rest of the week flew by. We did more community visits and said goodbye to all our favourite clients which was tough because we knew we would probably never see them ever again or for a very long time. Mr. Okidi decided that on Thursday, we would drive to Kisumu to check on Erica (who was still in the hospital and not doing very much better) and then from Kisumu, Nik, Mary & I would head to Mombasa and the Lamu. Although Perez & Mr. Okidi were coming with us, we sat down before we left and spoke about the last 6 weeks. It was so difficult to talk about all the unique and wonderful times we had over the last weeks without getting emotional. They had become our family and Perez was the best second mom anyone could ask for! After all our hallmark moments, we joined hands and Perez said a prayer for us to have a safe journey for the rest of the coming weeks. We all held it in until the prayer circle, and then Nik and I just burst out into tears (did you expect anything less?). And no, Mary didn’t cry -- apparently she has a heart of stone?

It was great to see Christine & Erica again and Erica was much better by the time we arrived that the doctors said she would be discharged by the next day. This was great news for her since she planned to still climb Mt. Kili on Tuesday! We of COURSE had dinner at our favourite Indian restaurant. We also found $1 nailpolish at the Nakumatt and went crazy buying them, and then realized that we literally have no room for anything. As it stands now, each of our backpacks weighs about the same as a baby elephant (Did I mention that packing our backpacks was BRUTAL?). None of us have any idea why our things weigh so much (considering we gave away half of our clothes), but I blame it on all the souvenirs I bought myself (I mean, all of you) from Nakuru. What a fail! Now we are looking into ways to either ship a box home or leave stuff with relatives in London so we don’t have to carry it around the Europe portion of our trip. Hopefully someone comes through, we’ll reward them with a lot of nailpolish!

Anyways, the chef is making dinner especially for us and serving it to us on our rooftop balcony, so I should probably be going. Ahh…to live the hard life ;) We’re doing a huge outreach on Thursday all by ourselves with no translators, cut us some slack!

Love & Ocean Breeze,

Shahla

Baboons, Tea and Chapatis x 3

Saturday morning, Gabby picked us up at 5am and so began our second safari adventure! We of course slept almost the entire way and woke up with one hour to go to Nakuru. There are tons of police stops along the way, and because they are so corrupt, the police try to make a dollar any which way they can. We had passed through the first five or so stops with no problem, but when we came to the sixth stop, the policeman waved us to stop the vehicle. Usually when they do this, they speak to the driver and they exchange some words in Swahili, and off we go. But this wasn’t the case. The police wouldn’t let go of the fact that there was a crack in the windshield and insisted on taking Gabby and all of his passengers to court. I thought “court” was a different way of saying “getting a ticket”, but we were wrong. The policeman said the he would seize the vehicle and all of us had to go to court. Of course we knew this was ludicrous since in the six weeks we’ve been here, we go through on average at least 2 stops a day and have never been hassled. In the end, Gabby had to pay off the policeman in order to let us go. We told him that he should’ve stood his ground, but he explained to us that it is the way things work here, and there was nothing we could do it about it. On top of everything, the gear box in the car seemed to be giving Gabby trouble and told us that he hoped it would make it to Nakuru. Once we arrived, Gabby decided to take the car to get fixed. Our initial plan was to do our safari on the Saturday, but because of the car issues and the time, we decided we’d postpone it to the next day and spend the rest of the day walking around Nakuru and going to the market.

That was good news and bad news. Good news because we had lots of time to pick out exactly what we wanted. Bad news because we had lots of time to pick out exactly what we wanted, and it turned out that we each wanted a lot of things! After spending 4 hours at the market, I managed to get a combination of bowls, statues, earrings, bracelets a globe (don’t ask) and a bag. All of which I’m going to have to lug around with me for the next 6 weeks. Before heading back to our hostel, we of course made stopovers at the Nakumatt and Tusky’s, since no trip would be complete without them! We somehow managed to get upgraded to a triple room at our hostel. We were all so exhausted that we made it an early night so we could get up the next morning.

At 6am we were out and ready to go. Nakuru National Park is only a 10 minute drive from the city, so it took us no time to get there. We were greeted by a bunch of little baboons in the parking lot, all being cheeky and trying to get into our windows. Although we tried to pull the same stunt as we did in Masai Mara by getting a discount on the entry fee, it didn’t work and we had to pay the standard $90USD. The park was so beautiful and peaceful with greenery everywhere, the complete opposite to the arid desert-like appearance of the Mara. While in the Mara you see animals at every turn, it’s a little more difficult to find them in this park. Our first stop was to head to the river where we were greeted by a sea of pink. Although there were not as many as there are other times of the year, the flamingos were stunning and graceful, just as we expected. You are allowed to get out of your vehicle in the park (unlike the Mara) when you are near the river, so we got out and took a bunch of pictures. Just as we got back into the car we saw a herd (not sure if they’re called a herd) of rhinos looking straight at us. They were so close to us we could hardly believe it. Gaby was getting scared because one of the rhinos had a little baby with them and Gab said that the most dangerous animal is a rhino with a child in tow. After that, we headed to my favourite part of the day, baboon point! Since I was little, monkeys have been my favourite animal! We headed to the lookout point and when we got there, we were surrounded by baboons. They were the cutest! We saw them checking one another’s hair for fleas, checking one another’s bums and even doing some cheeky business. It was the best! I was so happy! The rest of our safari was also awesome as we saw many buffalo, zebras and giraffes, but sadly no lions! We knew we were so lucky to have seen all the animals we did at the Mara, so we weren’t disappointed at all. The park was beautiful and definitely worth it!

On the way home, we passed through a town called Kericho. For those of you who are familiar with Kenya, Kericho is known for its tea! Our lonely planet booked recommended a place called the “Tea Hotel”, where we could stop in for an “amazing cup of tea”. The hotel was beautiful and was surrounded by ample greenery and flowers. We entered this large tea room where we each enjoyed a cup of tea. I, myself had one of the best cups of masala tea ever! Yum yum! It took us about 7 hours to get home, and on the way saw people selling carrots, chickens, and most disturbing of all, bunny rabbits. They literally held these bunnies by their ears and smashed them against the window asking us if we wanted them. I wonder when a day will come when things here don’t surprise me…

We had Monday off because Mr. Okidi wanted us to visit his family. Since Gaby’s family lives close by, we were also invited there. And a family that lives near the Okidis in Rongo invited us to their house for dinner. We knew we were in for a long, long day. Mr. Okidi’s family lives up a mountain that took us at least 90 minutes to get to. Word got around that we love chapatis, so when we got there, we were treated to a fest of chapatis, beans, rice and pineapple. They had a pineapple patch on their property and we saw how pineapples are grown. It is the coolest thing! A plant sprouts and on top of it is a pineapple! Google image it! We spent quite a bit of time at Mr. Okidi’s place (mainly because he left in between for a 2 hour meeting that we knew nothing of), and then headed 45 minutes to Gaby’s house. Gaby has the cutest family and has three boys, Charles, Joseph and Wellington. We laughed when we saw that his wife had also prepared for us our favourite meal; yup, you guessed it, beans and chapatis. We gave their family some toys and played volleyball with their children for a while. It started raining hard as we headed out, and by the time we got to the last house, there was a complete power outage. You can never cancel here (it’s looked upon as very rude), so we headed out with our headlamps and Gaby dropped us at the last house. We were stuffed by that point but knew that we would have to eat. When the mother of the girls brought out the food, we wanted to die when we saw that it was once again, beans and chapatis. They told us that they had heard it was our favourite and we could do nothing but laugh and force down another plateful. What an eventful weekend!

This past week at placement has been quite eye-opening, and I will shortly write a blog about our last week’s experiences. But, I would like to say CONGRATS!!! to all my OTs who have officially finished their last day at placement, which means you are officially done school!!! In two weeks, we will soon be joining you, although, it’s a bit of a different situation here since none of us want to leave! But nonetheless, congrats, congrats, congrats!!!

Love & Chapatis,

Shahla

Love At First Smile...

This blog entry is about a girl named Emelda. I may have spoken about this beautiful 10 year old in a previous post, but allow me to introduce her again. I met Emelda at an outreach that we did two Fridays ago. An outreach (which usually occurs once or twice every week) is where we are literally driven to a community or village (usually very far away) and people with all different kinds of issues form a line and expect us to “cure” them. Just to put it in perspective, at one of our outreaches we had about 150 people waiting for us when we got there, and at this particular outreach we may have seen close to 80 people.

Towards the middle of our day, Emelda came in with her father. At first, Christine (the physiotherapy student) and I thought it was her grandfather because he was at least 65-70 years old. We later found out that Emelda’s dad actually has two wives, with his youngest child being 8 months old. When we went to greet Emelda, she gave us the biggest smile we had ever seen. It was love at first smile.

Emelda’s dad brought her in because she was having erratic bouts where she would hit her head on the ground, hurt herself and then cry (I may have said this part in an earlier post). Besides this, we could see that Emelda could use therapy for her gait and her speech (as there are no speech language pathologists here, so OTs do speech) but we couldn’t assess her properly until she was seen by a doctor. When we asked her father about this, he told us that he didn’t have the money to take her there, and so Christine and I decided that giving her father $10 for them to go to the hospital and return home was money well spent. We asked her father if he would bring her in to the clinic for training week, and he said that he would do everything in his power to try and make it happen. Over the weeks, we have had many parents promise to bring their children in, but for a variety of reasons, mainly financial, they don’t end up doing so. Maybe it was the fact that he was so genuine when he made his promise or maybe it was his smile, but we believed him and hoped that we would see both of them very soon.

Training week is a week where clients who we feel could benefit from more intensive therapy stay at the clinic for an entire week so we can treat them for five consecutive days. They sleep here and are provided with three meals a day (this is also where your donations have gone to). On Monday morning, you can imagine our delight when we saw Emelda’s smiling face greet us as we entered the clinic. I was overjoyed and so happy to see her. We asked her dad what happened when he went to the hospital, and he told us that the doctor said that she looked okay, but that further tests would have to be done. He brought us the book from the hospital to prove that they went, and when I looked at the date, I saw that he had taken her one day after we had initially seen them. 

Since we split up clients amongst us, I decided that I wanted to work with Emelda. We had an immediate bond and I couldn’t go anywhere without her coming to hug me or touch my face. Emelda was born without any sort of disability, but just like the majority of clients we’ve seen, developed severe malaria which left her pretty impaired and without much of her speech. She toe-walks and although is quite unsteady on her feet, is able to walk about 20 steps without falling. She can repeat sounds that are made, but certain letters and combinations of letters are difficult for her to fully grasp.

With many of the clients we have seen, no matter how young they are, there seems to be a bond which is lacking between the parent and child. I’m not sure if it is cultural or if we have just stumbled upon a lot of these cases, but it is rare to find a relationship where the bond is clearly evident. Of all the relationships I have seen so far, the one between Emelda and her dad is the most loving.  They look at each other with such kindness and understanding that it is difficult to describe in words. Emelda’s dad works so hard with her and it’s clear that he just wants the best possible life for her. 

We started by working on her gait, and when we asked Emelda to walk for us, we noticed that her shoes were coming off her feet. With limited resources, we thought that we could use the velcro (which we brought for splinting) to make straps for her shoes. The next day, when we arrived in the morning, Emelda’s dad had taken her to the tailor and got the straps sewed on to her shoes. It may seem like nothing, but that small gesture was the most proactive thing we have seen a parent do for their child since we have come. As the week went on, we continued to work with Emelda on her speech and walking. Emelda can do some things by herself (like feeding), but still needs some help when toileting and showering. When I would be working with other clients, I could see that Emelda’s dad would pull her aside and work with her on any exercises that we gave them. He told me that he believed in his daughter and believed that one day she would be able to be independent. I loved hearing it and told him that he was right.

At the beginning of the week, I told myself that by the end of training week, I would get Emelda to recognize me and say my name. As the days passed and I practiced her speech, she tried hard to make the “SH” noise, but couldn’t do it. She would always say my name as “Dhaala” and after she did, smiled and touched my face. I realized then that it was no longer important for her to get my name, she said it to the best of her ability, and the more she said it, the more beautiful it sounded to me. 

On Wednesday, Emelda’s dad approached me and asked to talk to me in private. When I asked him what was wrong, he told me that his dream would be for Emelda to go to school. When I asked him why she hadn’t been in school until now, he told her that he couldn’t afford to send her to a “special school” (what they use to describe schools who accept children with disabilities to attend). He asked if I could sponsor him, and his pleading eyes told me that there was no way I could say no. I told him that we would figure something out and would speak to Mr. Okidi about school for Emelda. Once I spoke to Nikita and Christine, we all decided that we would sponsor her tuition for a year. We approached Mr. Okidi who told us that because of his close ties with a specific school, Emelda would have no problem getting in. He told us that tuition is about $150 CAD/year and that there would be extra costs for uniforms, books, medicine, etc. The school that we are looking to send Emelda to is called “Ogande School”, a boarding school specifically for children with disabilities. We visited this school on a previous outreach and were so impressed by the teachers who were each specially trained and who treated each child with respect and dignity. We told Emelda’s dad that we would cover the tuition if he would pay for the extra fees, his eyes welled up with tears and he thanked us for at least ten minutes. When I looked at Emelda and told her that she would be going to school, she looked directly in my eyes and gave the biggest smile I had seen yet. A week ago, this opportunity never existed, and now, her life would be changed forever.

I thought about $150. Car insurance for a month. A few good dinners. Going to the Roger’s cup. A front row seat a concert. Sending a child to school. Somehow, the latter has a little bit of a nice ring to it. It’s amazing how we can spend so easily on things that in a matter of a few days or even a few hours are forgotten, but have to think about spending on things that truly make a difference. Thank you once again to all of you for your donations. I can assure you that the money you have donated has gone and is still going a long way.

For some of you, I just rambled on for two pages about one girl. No doubt there have been many children who have touched my heart. But it’s different when it comes to Emelda and her father. They touched my heart as well. But somehow, they also reached inside of me and claimed a piece of it as their own.

Thanks for listening. As soon as I get home, I’ll apply for a job at Hallmark in their “sappy cards” department.

Love & Big Smiles,
Shahla

You know, when I was young, I used to walk 8km, in the blazing sun, uphill, in flip flops to work…

Literally. Two days last week, all of us made the trek after work from our clinic in Opapo to our home in Rongo. 8 loooong kilometres. It’s literally a straight road, progressively uphill to our house. I don’t know what possessed us to do it, but we decided that we needed the exercise.

And another thing - to all of you, who took me out before I left, who told me that I would lose so much weight, who took me for endless breakfasts, lunches and dinners, who told me that all the naans and kabobs at Gerrard street would be good for me, who supported my habit of 8 iced caps a day and who encouraged me that three snacks between every meal would fatten me up so I would be okay when I  lose all that weight in Africa, to all of you - thanks for nothing.  Not only have I not lost any weight, but the carbs with a side of carbs diet here is actually a recipe that Jenny Craig would not be proud of.

Now that we’re in such a routine over here, it’s hard to imagine how life is back home. I mean, I get updates about the weather, how great the Drake concert was and that Amy Winehouse died, but, we live a life that is so far removed from what we were used to that it’s even hard to describe in words. For example, one day on our drive home all of us had a long conversation with our driver Gabby. Gabby is the most kind-hearted person you will ever meet and he makes our morning when he greets us every morning with his big smile (despite the fact that his two front teeth are missing). One day we were really hungry and asked him if they had any drive through restaurants. He had no idea what we were talking to him and so we tried to describe it to him using the example of a McDonalds. We spoke about McDonalds so non-chalantly until he stopped us mid-sentence and asked us to describe this “McDonalds” that we kept speaking of. In our ethnocentric way, we totally assumed that he knew what one was without even asking. When we spoke to Gabby about a “minimum wage”, he was shocked and told us that there was no such thing in Kenya. He asked us how many cows men had to give to the family of the girl they wanted to marry. When we tried to explain to him the idea of love and the fact that there is no real bartering system (except for usually a diamond ring), he was shocked. He stopped dead in his tracks and said, “Wait a minute, so girls in Canada are free?” He told us that coupled were to never show affection in public, and it was the most disrespectful when they showed affection in front of their parents. And when we told him that homosexuality was widely accepted in Canada he was shocked. He asked about how many children were orphans and how many people had AIDS. It was quite the eye-opening conversation, not only for him, but for us as well.

Gabby’s question regarding orphans and AIDS brings me to commenting on what we have seen in our placement so far. We have seen quite a number of clients, and no joke, 95% of the children do not have one parent, and 80% of the children are orphans. The devastating effect that both malaria and HIV/AIDS has had on the Kenyan population is astounding. About half of the children we have seen were born without a disability. And of these children, most if not all have had a bout of malaria which after has left them severely impaired.  The concern for these children is what will happen when their primary caretaker (usually a grandparent) dies. Most family members are reluctant to welcome a child/person with a disability into their home, even if there is no one else to look after them. I would once again like to thank all of you who have donated to the fundraising campaign I had. I cannot tell you how much of a difference a small donation can make. For $10 Canadian dollars, we were able to send a girl and her father to the hospital where she could get tested for erratic seizures she was having. We had another little boy who had severe CP and epilepsy. The child’s epilepsy was so severe that he seized on average about 10-11 times a day. Nikita and I could hardly keep ourselves together when during our initial assessment when the little boy had a 2-minute seizure in front of us. We asked the grandmother (both parents had died) if she gave him his medication, and she told us that she didn’t think it worked so she stopped giving it to him. Your donations have allowed for this boy to come to an epilepsy clinic we are holding where medication and education will be provided. For $80, a child or adult can have calipers made which can help them walk independently. For $120, a child with severe impairment can get a wheelchair. And for $150, you can send a child to a school for those with disabilities for an entire year. So thank you, thank you, thank you.

Amongst all the sadness, there are moments of hilarity. Most families are very religious here and like to pray before we start a treatment session. As we were praying I noticed Nikita looking up and laughing. When we were done she nudged me to look up top of the cabinet which housed the dishes. When I looked up, I saw not only one, but two hens staring back at me. We could not stop laughing because they started making such loud noises that we couldn’t hear the client’s parents. We asked why they were just casually placed atop of the cabinet and they told us that the hens were laying their eggs. Just when we thought we had seen it all, four ducks just strolled through the living room going unnoticed by everyone but us. They took a few laps around the room and exited just in time for a cat to come hissing in. When that was done, it was time for the cows outside to start mooing. It took us twice the time than we had initially planned to complete the assessment.

We’ve been having a great and eye opening experience here. I try to capture as much as I in this blog, but even with effort, it is difficult to do.

Thanks again to all of you for following. Hope the summer is treating you well!

Love & Hens, Ducks & Cows,

Shahla